


Hold Your Holy Breath and Wait for Me

by Pseudthisyafucks (collettephinz)



Category: Jelix - relationship, Scepticpie- relationship, Youtube - RPF
Genre: Angst, Bad Coping Skills, Badass Jack, China attacks but they have good reason, End of the World, Felix is multilingual, Happy Ending, M/M, Nuclear Apocalypse, allusions to torture, desperate Seán, i couldn't just randomly throw mark in here just to kill him, it's all just a mess guys what do you expect from a man-made apocalypse, minor character death but no one you know cause they're fake people that i made up, mostly original characters on the side that push the story along, or marzia, that'd be fucked up, vaguely described deaths
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-30
Updated: 2016-12-30
Packaged: 2018-09-13 07:37:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 19,971
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9113068
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/collettephinz/pseuds/Pseudthisyafucks
Summary: When the world ended, all Seán really thought about was Felix.





	

**Author's Note:**

> this turned out to be way more than i bargained for
> 
> like 
> 
> this was supposed to be less than 5k
> 
> it started out with a kiss how did it end up like this **it was only a kiss**
> 
> this is all inspired by one scene in my head that i made up to this song: _Alan Walker's "Sing Me to Sleep (marshmallow remix)_

When the world ended, all Seán really thought about was Felix. He’d been on the phone with his mother when she’d burned alive, so that had only left one person that Seán cared for. He remembered the way his mother had sobbed and begged for Seán to keep going as she’d watched the shockwave and wall of fire from the first hydrogen bomb to hit Ireland push towards her. Seán could only imagine the fear she’d felt. He wished he could forget the fear he’d heard in her voice. Still, Seán knew he was one of the lucky ones. At least he’d been able to say his mother he loved her one last time.

A random fucking man had grabbed him off the street and pulled him into a fallout shelter when the second bomb had hit, less than seven minutes later. The old man had grabbed person after person, bringing in over thirty people, until he hadn’t come back at all. Seán remembered the roar of the shockwave passing over them, remembered the screaming and the shaking and the flickering lights. He’d been holding onto this one girl, a pretty brunette who looked to be around his age name Anna. She was dead now. Part of the fallout shelter had caved in one itself and twenty six of the thirty-two people had been crushed. Seán had been one of the objectively “lucky” people to make it out of the shelter alive.

He wished he hadn’t moved to Athlone for school, at first.

He wished he’d died with his mother in Cork.

Then he remembered Felix.

The boy he played video games with online, who made him laugh and forget the stress of his studies. The boy who he talked to the second he woke up, and the last person he talked to before falling asleep. The boy he was kinda-sorta dating. More than kinda-sorta, but he wasn’t sure what constituted dating now that the world had ended. Wasn’t even sure if dating was still a thing. Felix was a stereotypically beautiful Swedish man studying architecture at the university of Brighton through an international program. He and Seán had met through fucking Halo, of all games. Seán had kicked his ass at Griffball and Felix had messaged him, calling him a dirty cunt. They had become friends moments after. Boyfriends a month later. And that was three years ago.

When he’d gotten out of the shelter, he’d been alone. There weren’t exactly a lot of people around, aside from the six people he’d escaped the shelter with. It had taken them days to climb out, though. Days of surviving in the dark alongside slowly decaying bodies. Seán hadn’t been able to pull his hand from her grip for a long time, partly because rigor mortis, and partly because he felt like she didn’t deserve to die alone like his mother had.

The world outside had been dark and dreary. Buildings had been crumbling in on themselves and there’d been no electricity or running water, save what had built up in the pipes. Seán had stolen a shower from an elementary school gymnasium. The water had been weak and cold, but it washed away the blood.

He’d spent two days wandering around Athlone, picking up clothes and supplies. He hadn’t had a purpose, though. He spent most of his time sorting through the rubble of his dormitory (and bodies, bodies, bodies), searching for something he couldn’t actually describe. It wasn’t until he’d found the stupid Christmas present Felix had sent him the previous year that he felt like he was more than the living dead. It was a weird plush toy— a bright green eye that acted as a pillow.

Seán didn’t know who had sent the bomb that killed his mother. He didn’t know who was fighting who. He didn’t even know who had started the fight, or who had been the last to launch a bomb. Who had been the one to finish it. He didn’t know who was alive, who was dead, and who was halfway there. He didn’t know who had won and who had lost and what they’d been fighting for. He didn’t know if he was going to get sick and die from radiation. He didn’t know if he was going to have to kill other humans to make it in this new world.

But he knew he had to find Felix. 

That was all he could think about.

Seán packed a duffel bag, grabbed a baseball bat he found in someone’s yard, pulled on his coat, and tucked the stupid stuffed pillow in his satchel. Then he started walking.

. . .

He met his first group of survivors at the outskirts of Athlone— a group of students he identified only by their “AIT” shirts. He’d left those five people from the shelter back in main Athlone because all of them wanted to go further north, up into Ireland. Seán needed to go down. Needed to cross the pond and get to Felix. 

The group had asked him his name and Seán hadn’t wanted to answer. He hadn’t felt like himself. He felt like a shell of a person, just walking through a desolate world to find that one little light of humanity. They’d asked him his name, and in a moment of existential morbidity, Seán had renamed himself. A new name for the new person he was going to become.

“Me name’s Jack,” he’d replied. He called himself Jack because it reminded him of the time Felix had called him at three in the fucking AM to drunkenly ramble about a deck of playing cards he had found that sported a Jack card that resembled Seán. It meant something to him. He felt more like Jack than Seán these days anyways. A carbon copy card that served little purpose and was just there to serve the upper hands. Jack remembered asking Felix if the king had looked anything like the Swede. It would be fitting to have Jack serve Felix.

He’d stayed with the group for the night and listened to them talk about how they’d escaped the second blast. How they’d heard London had fallen a mere hour before Dublin had. How the world was in shambles. One girl said that Russians had been the ones to send up the first bomb. Another had said it was the Americans. Jack didn’t care anymore. He didn’t see a point in asking who had started the end of the world. It was all over, no matter who threw the first stone. Jack didn’t want to waste his energy pointing fingers. Not when he had miles to go. 

(he wished he’d taken the chance to learn to fucking drive)

“I hear there are people heading down into Europe,” a boy had told Jack when Jack had been rather stiff about answering questions to his destination. “Towards France and Italy. Greece. I was on the web a lot as the bombs were going off, till the last second, really. People are heading to the equator. Say it’s easier to survive in the warmth.”

That didn’t sound like a bad idea to Jack. Maybe, if he ever found Felix, he’d take the boy down to Spain. 

“Any news on Brighton?” he’d asked, voice cracking at the end. He’d blamed it on the cold and had pulled his jacket closer to his body. The students had all traded glances, most looking like they were thinking as hard as they possibly could to remember if the city had been mentioned. But one boy had looked resignedly pitying. 

“That place was devastated, mate,” he’d told Jack. “Completely leveled.”

Well. Jack wasn’t sure if he believed him. Word of mouth and all. He had nodded politely and accepted an offering of canned beans from the girl beside him. He’d known they all felt sorry for him, for one reason or anything. That was why they’d offered food. Human kindness had survived the blast, and Jack was going to take advantage of their generosity. He’d only had canned vegetables, anyways. He’d need the protein. 

He fell asleep with them all, and woke up before them. He set out on the road with his new name and firm denial of the fate of Brighton and his boy.

. . .

It should’ve taken him about a day to walk from Athlone to Dublin, Jack knew that. What he hadn’t counted on was the absolute fucking insanity the world had fallen into. 

Everything went wrong during his journey to Dublin. The road was flat, because most of fucking Ireland was flat, it wasn’t like there was a lot for him to have to avoid, landmass wise. But people? People were fucking crazy. He’d headed into one small town and been driven out by bullets whizzing over his head. Only four days off from the day the world ended, and everyone was wiling to kill each other. Jack couldn't believe it.

That was a lie.

He could believe that. He could believe the violence and depravity of humans. He could easily believe they’d be willing to kill each other for the first excuse they got. Jack had run for as long as he could until he’d realized one of the bullets had gone through his side. The blood spilled down his shirt and stained his jacket. He didn’t have anything to staunch the bleeding aside from his jacket and clothes. The bullet had gone right through him. That was objectively lucky. Still, he lost the next two days to just making sure he wasn’t going to bleed out and die. 

He learned how to dress a wound from an elderly woman who knew a lot more about surviving than he did. She’d told him that even though water wasn’t much of an issue right now, as it was the rainy season in Ireland, she taught him how to catch dew water anyways. She taught him how to stitch a wound with dental floss, how to start a fire, and how the SPEAR acronym had apparently already saved her life twice. Jack knew a lot now. Still introduced himself as Jack. She’d left him those two days later and Jack realized that walking after having a bullet go through your side was probably the worst thing ever.

He tore the stitches at least twice, could barely cover a few kilometers a day. Seven days into the end of the world and he was already dying. He’d played so many video games before this, so many survival games, had spent over fucking a hundred hours with Felix on ARK— it was ridiculous that he was dying a week into the end. An insult to his logged Steam gameplay hours. 

He scrounged new clothes from an empty home. He wondered how many towns were abandoned, not from people being actually dead, but just paranoia.

On night eight, he heard gunfire. Rapid gunfire. Like soundbites he’d heard from the war movies he hated to watch. The gunfire had woken him up and he’d hid in the barely-there woods, because there were flashes down the road and he didn’t want to get fucking shot again. The gunfire sounded like something beyond the regular rifles he’d expected the people of Ireland to have in their homes. They sounded like semiautomatics, assault rifles and shit. Way beyond what your average Irish hunter would have. 

Jack knew it had to be military. He just didn’t want to believe it. 

Going down the same road he’d seen the gunfire was an absolute no. He wasn’t going to walk right into the mouth of the fucking devil. It meant he’d have to take the long way around, though. He’d have to avoid Horseleap and go through Rosemount, possibly onto Geoghegan. He wanted to avoid Milltownpass entirely. He headed south, still unable to get very far in a day. 

Gunfire followed him every night, getting close and closer. He never investigated in the daylight and didn’t want to try and find out who was doing all the shooting. He realized he’d have to circle around to Johnstown. 

In Baskin, he met a little girl and her older brother, both of them heading back the way he had come. They asked him about Athlone, saying they were going for their older sister who had studied at the same university as Jack. As they described her, though, Jack began to feel too sick to consider eating for the rest of the day. They described a pretty brunette named Anna who had held Jack’s hand as she’d died.

He told them. He wasn’t a fucking monster. He told them about the girl and how she’d been crushed. How she was dead for two days before he could finally bring himself to let her go. The little girl named Aoife had cried, but the older brother, Cian— he’d hugged Jack. Had thanked him for being there for their sister when they couldn’t. He’d given Jack a bottle of whiskey that he had apparently taken from his parents’ cabinet back at Dublin. That had Jack’s attention.

“What’s happening in Dublin?” he asked urgently. “Is it crazy? Riots and shite?”

Cian shook his head. “We’re outrunning the military.”

“What military?”

“We don’t know. We don’t recognize their uniforms. But they’re killing people.”

Jack sat up straighter. “They’re what?’

Cian grimaced. “Shooting people down in the streets. They’re rounding everyone up and killing them. It looks like when they’re done with a town, they then just move on. They don’t leave anyone behind. I think they’re just trying to kill people, not claim lands. I think Ireland’s been invaded or something fucked.” He paused. “You’re going to Dublin, aren’t ye’?”

“I need to get to Brighton,” Jack replied. “They have that ferry that goes to Pembroke, in Wales? I need to see if anyone’s still working that.” Or he’d build a boat and get himself across on his own, regardless of his hatred for the water.

“Brighton’s gone,” Cian replied. “Our mum and da were there for a honeymoon. We saw footage from them of the bomb hitting, they sent us video of the bomb hitting not even a fucking kilometer from their hotel. All of England might as well be ash.”

Jack grew pale the more Cian spoke. Aoife reached out to nudge his knee as she ate her canned corn. “Who’re you looking for?” she asked him.

“Me boyfriend,” Jack replied, voice low and numb. “He was studying there. But if you say Brighton’s gone…”

“The sirens went off,” Cian said. “We heard them in the video. They got a warning. Maybe he got out.”

Jack looked down at his hands and could only nod. “Thank you.”

“Who is he?” Aoife asked, smiling. “I like boyfriends. I think they’re cute.” 

“How old are you?” Jack asked.

“I’m nine,” she replied, still smiling. “Who’s your boyfriend? I’ll bet he’s still okay. I’ve seen a lot of love movies, ye’ know. The two people always end up happy in the end. I think you’re gonna find him, so you should tell us about him. Do you have a picture?”

“I wish,” Jack sighed. He would give anything for one of his photos of Felix. “But I have this.” He pulled out the green eyed pillow and handed it to Aoife. She gasped, eyes going wide as she reached out and hugged the pillow tightly. “He sent me that for Christmas or something. It’s a joke about the online name I use when playing video games and shite. Or, well, the online name I used to use.” He smiled sadly as he watched her snuggle the pillow. He wondered how long it had been since she’d been able to touch something soft. Wondered if they’d had a bed or a blanket in days. Jack hadn’t.

“What’s his name?” Cian asked.

“Felix,” Jack replied, feeling a sort of pain in his chest at hearing Felix’s name said aloud for the first time in days. “He’s Swedish. Studying architecture. Or was. He’s a bit of a dork and he cried during this one video game about the zombies and the little girl. He’s speaks three languages, too, aside from his native tongue. Speaks English, Italian, and German with his Swedish. It’s impressive.”

“Have ye’ ever met?”

Jack nodded. “Once. We’ve been dating for three years. He got to fly up and visit last year for me birthday. It was amazing. Spent the week together.” Jack sighed. “Wish I could see him. I want to find anything. Something. Even…” Even a body. But he couldn’t say that aloud. A body to hold and bury would mean the world to him. “Uhm, okay,” Jack said, clearing his throat. “Any idea who started this?”

“What, the arms war?” Cian shook his head. “No fucking clue. I just know I don’t know who’s attacking us. But you have to avoid all major roads. Stay in the hills if ye’ got to. Just don’t let yourself be seen. Don’t let yourself be caught. They’ll kill ye’, no questions asked.”

“Sometimes that doesn’t sound like such a bad thing,” Jack mumbled. Little Aoife gasped at Jack’s confession, but Cian looked like he understood. Jack was sure he did. He was sure that the only reason Cian hadn’t put a gun to his head was the little girl sitting beside him. The only reason Jack hadn’t done the same was for Felix. A man who could very well be dead.

“Tell me more about Felix,” Aoife prodded. “I wanna hear more happy things. There’s not a lot of happy things anymore.”

Jack couldn’t agree more. He didn’t mind spending the rest of the night telling her all about Felix. Why he loved him, why he wanted to find him, and why he would never give up. Felix was his reason for living. Even if Felix weren’t alive, Jack wouldn’t rest until he’d given Felix a proper burial. After that, he wasn’t sure what he’d do. But one step at a time, yeah?

. . .

Kilkock was where civilization really became noticeable again, but it was only empty buildings, half of them caved in. He was sure the shockwave had reached here, but he’d thought people were being killed in droves. The gunfire was officially behind him, Jack had passed them sometime yesterday, avoided and switched places. Now the area was becoming more urbanized. Everything smelled like dead animal, but he assumed that was the sewage. He passed a clothing shop, and saw a green parka with a fur hood in the window. Felix had bought him one like that a while ago. Jack had lost it in his dorm.

Now see, Jack had been pretty morally rigid this whole apocalypse. He hadn't stolen food or water or anything from anyone. Hadn’t hurt another human, had even managed to not need to hurt an animal. He hadn’t done more than accidentally kill bugs from where he’d sleep on the ground. It wasn’t that he hadn’t had the opportunity to do something morally unsound multiple times, it was just that he’d felt the need to be above that and show some humanity.

Needless to say, he felt like he’d developed enough good karma to merit this one act of capitalist wrong.

The parka was warmer than his rain coat, anyways. It reminded him of Felix, too, and that gave him a sense of rejuvenation, And when sleeping that night, he’d been able to pretend that Felix had been the one to lay the jacket over his shoulders and whisper him goodnight. 

. . .

The next morning, when he woke up, he looked a little to his right and saw he had fallen asleep next to a mass grave.

He approached the edge with horror, looked down and saw the hole was nearly a fucking half kilometer long, and the same length. The smell that had permeated the whole town now made sense. He’d smelt the same thing down in the shelter for those days before they’d escaped. 

Decaying flesh. Dead people buried in the ground with nothing atop them to staunch the stench. Jack looked over the bodies and saw they’d all be shot, obviously. That explained how he hadn’t seen any bodies. Jack felt ill when he saw one dead women had been cradling a baby to her chest. The baby was unharmed, though. They’d probably shot the woman and let the baby starve.

Jack’s hand clenched into a fist and, for the first time since the world had ended, felt like he was capable of murdering a man. If only to avenge a starved infant. 

He turned and started to head deeper into the city, following signs towards Dublin. Everything was empty. He found another mass grave, this one even bigger than the first. Dublin and the surrounding areas had a population of over six hundred thousand people, but even the mass graves didn’t hold that amount of people. He was sure everyone else had fled the cities. 

Night two, though, he heard gunshots. The same rounds as semiautomatics. The military was back in the city and Jack’s life became noticeably more difficult. He couldn’t run, the bullet wound was proving to be the worst thing to ever happen to him. Even walking, he had a horrible limp If he was seen, he’d be caught. He wouldn’t be able to escape.

The thought made him head in for bed early. He hunkered down in a small townhouse that had no roof. He looked up at the stars and remembered something stupidly romantic Felix had told him.

_“Doesn’t matter where we are, Seán,” Felix said. “If you look up at that sky, it’s the same exact fucking sky that I see. Same stars, same moon, and same empty space And maybe, if I put a mirror on the moon, angle it just right, I’ll be able to watch you masturbate.”_

_“Way to ruin the fucking moment,” Seán laughed, throwing a candy wrapper at Felix’s image in the Skype call. “Ye’ know, what you were saying was kinda sweet until that. I’d actually thought you were going to be sweet to me for just a moment there, but I see you can’t even go one fucking minute without thinking about my dick.”_

_Felix was quiet for a moment. Seán watched him on the screen. Felix licked his beard, which was something he denied ever doing, and only ever did when he was thinking. “Fe’?”_

_“The thought does kinda help me,” Felix told him after a second. “I know it’s stupid, but school is stressful enough to break my brain a little. Knowing that you’re only a plane flight away and looking at the same sky helps me a lot. Helps me feel like this is a real relationship, you know?”_

_Seán frowned. “What do you mean?”_

_“I just, I have asshole friends who tell me you’re not really my boyfriend or anything,” Felix sighed. “They’re jackasses, really. They like fucking with me. I know they don’t mean it. But the random people I meet in class who ask me if I’m dating anyone say that an online relationship isn’t a real one. That if I slept with them, it wouldn’t be cheating.”_

_Seán went quiet.  
 Felix smiled sadly to him. “I haven’t been with anyone, Seán. I turn them all down.”_

_“I know ye’ do,” Seán assured him gently. “Just makes me upset to know you’ve got to deal with people like that.” He wished he could reach out and take Felix’s face in his hand, be a physical comfort as compared to a simple emotional one. “I hate that you feel so pressured, _a stór_.”_

_Felix shrugged. “Well, what can you do.”_

_They were both momentarily silent._

_“I’m seeing the same sky, love,” Seán told him. “And you can watch me masturbate, if ye’ really want. But I’d recommend video. Putting a mirror on the moon sounds fucking expensive.”_

_Felix chuckled. “Love you, Seán.”_

Jack hugged the green eye to his chest and refused to let himself cry.

. . .

“Get up.”

Jack woke up starring down the barrel of a gun. He looked past it to the man pointing the gun at him. He was undeniably Asian. Jack didn’t recognize the uniform he was wearing. He was pretty sure he was going to die.

“I said get up,” the man repeated. Jack was surprised he wasn’t dead yet. He followed the orders, standing, and putting his pillow in his satchel. The man let him gather his things and kept the gun to his head. He walked Jack to a sort of truck that had a tarp over the back. “Get in and lie down.”

Jack crawled into the bed of the truck. He realized he was lying down among gardening tools and manure. It smelled rank. He plugged his nose and refused to let the panic set in.

“You stay in here,” the man told him firmly. “I get you out of here.”

“Where are ye’ taking me?” Jack asked.

The man shook his head. “Zhōngguó Rénmín Jiefàngjun. Stay quiet. They kill you. Ni huì si.”

Jack stayed crouched in the back of the van, the tarp forcing him to remain lying on his stomach. The truck engine started and they began to move. Jack debated just jumping out of the back and hitting the ground running, though he really didn’t know how to properly bug out of a moving vehicle. He was half positive he was about to die, more than sure that this man was going to put a bullet into the back of his head. 

The man drove for a long time, over bumps and potholes that jostled Jack around like a ragdoll. But the scariest moment was when he stopped. Jack froze and heard the barking of dogs along with feverishly quick conversation all in a language he didn’t understand, same language the man driving the truck had been speaking. He wished Felix were here. Maybe he would be able to at least recognize this shit and tell him what it was.

He could hear dogs sniffing around the car and, for a terrifying moment, thought he’d be discovered. But then he remembered that the truck smelled overpoweringly like shit. A thrill of excitement ran through him when he realized that the manure was here to mask his scent, or at least a serendipitous event. The truck driver was sounding a little frantic, and Jack wished he could understand. The dogs passed without alerting anyone to his presence. The truck engine revved and they started driving again.

Holy shit, Jack was being smuggled away from the enemy, by the enemy? Was that what was happening? His heart was racing and he wished he could move around just to pull out that stupid fucking pillow because it helped serve to calm his nerves, but he knew he shouldn’t risk it. He was lucky enough that the dogs hadn’t caught his scent. 

The truck kept going for a long while, the road growing less hole-y and just entirely bumpy at one point, probably a dirt road. With a sinking feeling, he realized he was being driven away from the city, away from Dublin, away from Felix. The idea of bugging out returned and he knew that if he wanted to get out, he’d have to do it soon. Any further and he’d be walking for another day just to get back to where he’d been. He couldn’t afford that kind of time. 

Suddenly a bullet slammed through the manure just in front of Jack’s head. Light streamed in through the hole and the man slammed on the brakes, tires screeching. More gunshots sounded, and a bullet with through the truck by his feet. Jack stayed down. He folded his fingers over his head and prayed. 

He heard voices, in English this time.

“Fuckin’ check the back for supplies! I’ve got this fucking red.” Jack heard a single gunshot, way closer than the others, and flinched. Then the tarp was thrown back and he was thrust into the light.

“Well fuck me sideways,” a deep voice said, sounding extremely Scottish. Jack looked up and stared down the barrel of a gun for the second time today. “You fuckin’ with them, lad?” the man asked. He was large— his shoulders were nearly the size of Jack’s head. He had a huge, curly red beard and large eyebrows that Jack could barely see his eyes through. He was dressed in forest cameo and was holding an automatic rifle. “It’s always sad ta see one of your own in bed with the fuckin’ reds.”

“What?” Jack croaked. 

“Get him up,” the man snapped. “He’s coming with us. Don will know what to do with him.”

Jack was tugged up forcefully by his arms and legs. He kicked out widely, trying to escape. A fist came out and socked him in the jaw. He saw stars and they loaded him into the back of another truck, into the passenger seat. As they drove away, Jack caught a glimpse of the man that had probably been trying to save him. The man was bent out the window with his face blown in half. A potato sack was then thrown over Jack’s head and that was it

. . .

“You get your kicks from it?” the bearded Scotsman asked. His name was Angus and he claimed to be a part of some fucking Irish resistance that were holed up in a fucking castle. Jack guessed that it was Malahide. It was the only castle he knew of that was in the city near Dublin. “Throwing your lot in with them? Turning your back on your fellow man?”

“I’ve fucking told you,” Jack said in exasperation. He was soaked to the bone in cold water with the threat of waterboarding or something else archaic. He’d been asked the same question for a week, kept in the same horrible dungeon for a week, kept awake nearly every hour of the day for a week and fed only the barest amount of food. He was tired of saying the same thing over and over. “I’m not with anyone! I’m trying to get to Brighton. I was nearing Dublin when that man pointed a gun at me, told me to get in his truck, and then got me past some checkpoint. I think he was trying to get me out! Then you guys fucking killed him!”

He looked to his left where a very quiet, pale man sat listening to them. He’d been there for every interrogation, never said a word. He just watched, stared at Jack, like he could read his mind. At this point, Jack was pretty sure Angus answered to Mr. Slenderman. That was what he called the quiet man in his head. He was thin and pale and tall and wiry, very Slenderman-esque. It seemed like something Felix would’ve called the guy if they’d seen him around town when together. 

“I’m tellin’ ye’,” Jack insisted, voice weary. He didn’t want to be doused with water again. He was tired and wanted to sleep. They hadn’t let him sleep in three days. “I don’t know them. I don’t work with them. I don’t even know who they are.” No one had told Jack anything about the man or who the Irish resistance was fighting. “I don’t know anything. I just want to get to Brighton.”

Mr. Slenderman sighed and Jack startled. That was the first noise he’d heard from him. “Angus, I’m buying it.”

“Seriously?” Angus asked. “But he—”

“We’ve already been met with defectors,” Mr. Slenderman said, his voice as soft as Jack had imagined. Mr. Slenderman was also Irish. “It’s not hard to believe that this boy could’ve met another along the way.” Mr. Slenderman went to stand in front of Jack. Then he did the unthinkable— he reached down and cut the ropes that had kept Jack tied to his chair for the past week. 

“My name is Donovan,” he said. “We’re fighting the Chinese. Some North Koreans. Mostly the Chinese, though. We have no idea why they’re here. We just know that they seem to be one of the only militaries to survive the bombs with the government intact. They’re hunting us all down. Killing us en mass.”

“I know,” Jack said, watching Donovan warily. “I’ve seen the graves.”

Donovan’s expression turned grim. “Then maybe you’ve seen me wife.”

Jack couldn’t say anything.

“You say yer trying to get to Brighton, but I can tell you it’s a lost cause. Even if anywhere in England were still in one piece, there’s no way to get across the pond. The Chinese have all of the coast. We have no way of setting off. No way of reaching Wales or anywhere without getting caught by patrols. It’s impossible as of now.”

“Then I’ll swim,” Jack snapped. 

“You’ll die that way too,” Donovan sighed. “But continue to use that brain of yers, it’s important. You should know that we’re trying to take the seaboard back. Trying to get some people out on the waves too. We have no idea why they’re hunting us down, but we aim to find out. Once we can get off this rock, we can hope to catch some radio waves from people further out. Once we’re on the water, we can reach others and figure out how to mobilize as a group.” Donovan paused. “We can get you to Brighton.”

Jack narrowed his eyes. “What do ye want?” He was wiling to do anything to get to Felix. “I mean, ye’ have been fucking torturing me for the past week. Pretty sure you’re gonna have to apologize extra nice like if ye’ really want me.”

“I’m not saying I expect you to understand,” Donovan said. “I’m not expecting you to get it. I’m not expecting you to fight for us and I’m not expecting you to be capable of what we do. I just want ye’ to know that we are working the only angle that would let ye’ get to Brighton, and that if you’re to stay with us, you’re to earn your keep.”

Jack ran his hand over his sore wrist, watching Donovan. “Ye’ gonna hurt me again?”

“Not if we don’t have to.” Donovan smiled tightly. “This is war, after all. We don’t want to hurt anyone that we don’t have t’hurt, but we’re prepared to do anything we have to. So why don’t you just make sure not to shoot any of us in the back, yeah? Especially not if it’s one of our own guns you’re holding.”

“I’ll do it,” Jack said. 

“Excellent,” Donovan said, reaching out to shake. Jack just eyed the hand and didn’t reach out to meet him. “Understandable reaction. Can I get yer name?”

“Jack,” he replied. “Just Jack.”

“Call me Don, Jack,” Don said, smiling amicably. “We look forward to have ye’ in the fight. And I can promise ye’, the second we have a boat and a spot of beach, you’ll be on yer way to Brighton faster than you can click yer heels and wish for home.”

. . .

He was handed a rifle after being shown around the dreary castle. The woman handing him the rifle in front of Don called it an “Accuracy International Arctic Warfare,” which was so horribly grammatically incorrect that it had to be fucking British.

“Well, it is from the UK,” the girl had chuckled. Her name was Mary. She had braids in her hair and bags under her eyes. Her right leg was bandaged and still bleeding a little. She was nice.

“I have bad eyes,” Jack said, wanting to turn down the rifle that obviously needed to be handled by someone with keen eyesight. “I can’t use that thing.”

“Jack,” Donovan said patiently. “We’re a bunch of chronic drunks trying to pick a fight with one of the most organized, single minded, and efficient militaries in all of human history. We’re not very choosy.” Jack reluctantly took the rifle. “Mary will show ye’ how to clean and care for yer gun. She’ll take you to the range, teach you to shoot the thing as well. We’ll give you a hand gun for closer quarters, but this is the weapon I want you good at.”

“So I can do yer dirty work?” Jack asked snippishly.

“So I can keep ye’ as far from the frontline as possible while still keeping you in the fight,” Don corrected gently. “No one here under the age of sixteen doesn’t use a gun. I have to teach you how to use it on principle. But I want ye’ to get to Brighton. I want ye’ to find who you’re looking for.” He put a hand on Jack’s shoulder, looking into his eyes. There was something almost fatherly about his expression. Jack stiffened, but didn’t pull away. “The people on the frontline are only the people who want to be there. I don’t make people put their lives recklessly on the line for something they don’t believe in. I want you as far away as possible while still having use. So you’re going to learn to use this thing and pop those fuckers’ heads from a kilometer away. Got it?”

“Gonna try,” Jack mumbled. He was a little more open to the idea now that he knew it was intended to keep him safe. He looked over the gun in his hands and tried to imagine himself killing someone else. When it was a little too hard to picture, he remembered the dead mother and her starved baby in the mass grave.

It was easier to imagine murder after that. 

. . .

The hard part about fighting a war was the long term commitment that came with a need for victory.

Jack was good with the rifle. He couldn’t explain how or why, just knew he was known as a natural around the castle. People respected him. People saw him as someone to be feared. It was a little ridiculous, really. Jack may be able to kill someone with one shot from a kilometer away, but at night he curled up with a parka and a pillow shaped like an eyeball and pretended his boyfriend was holding him. That was very unintimidating. 

But he was a month into the shite, and wasn’t any closer to reaching Felix. He would’ve felt like he was failing Felix if he didn’t now fully understand the gravity of the situation.

Ireland was surrounded. There was no way to get off the land, no way for him to reach Britain and Felix. He couldn’t get to Felix, but not for lack of trying. Donovan had remained true to his word, too. He was working avidly at getting the rebels (who called themselves the Irish Insurgents— a daft name for a daft group of people) to a beach, to reclaim Dublin. That was the main goal. They had groups in nearly all the castles in Ireland, too, so they weren’t lacking for numbers. But it was still slow goings. The People’s Liberation Army had five men for their one. Donovan relied on steal operations, sneaky ways of taking down large groups while only using a few men. 

Jack was out of the castle a lot. Sneaky operations usually involved some sort of sniper, and Jack was the preferred fill in for that role. He still wasn’t sure how that had happened. Wasn’t sure when he’d become capable of ending a man’s life from such a far distance that sociopathic detachment was basically guaranteed. He felt like he should care whenever he killed a man, but ended up caring more about the fact that he didn’t care. 

He knew Felix wouldn’t be proud of him. Not anymore. That kept him up at night. How could Felix still feel something for a heartless murderer? A coward with a long range weapon? Felix was the one to abhor violence most of the time, and Jack knew he’d be heartbroken to see what Jack had become. He wouldn’t be able to blame Felix if he left him once he found him. He still had to find Felix anyways, even though he knew Felix would ultimately reject him. The was love, wasn’t it? Doing what was right even when you knew it wouldn’t work out well for you in the end.

“I think he’ll get it,” Mary told Jack, her voice soft and loving. She was his age, but she’d lost two children and her husband in the massacre of Dublin. She had felt much more pain than him. Jack always felt bad unloading his problems on her, but she was far too understanding. “No one’s going to come out of this unscathed, Jack. For all you know, he’s had to have done worse.”

“God, don’t tell me that,” Jack mumbled as he took apart and cleaned his rifle. “Don’t tell me something like that.”

Mary smiled sadly. “From what ye’ve told me, he’s smart. He won’t look down on ye’.”

“Jack.”

Jack looked up from his gun to see Don standing in the doorway. He set the scope he was cleaning down and waited for whatever he was about to be told. 

“I have a boy here,” Don said. “Brunet. Says he knows you.”

Jack frowned. “Where is he?”

“The main gate. We haven’t let him in yet, haven’t been sure if we can trust him. But if you do know him…”

“I’ll check it out.” Jack reassembled his rifle in under three minutes, a sloppy time that he was avidly trying to improve. It reminded him of video games. Brought him peace. Brought him closer to Felix. He shouldered the rifle and stood, heading to the gate at the bottom of the castle. The door was cracked open for Jack and he stepped out into the dull light of an Irish day.

He saw Cian and didn’t hesitate in throwing his arms around the other boy. It had been over a month since he’d met the boy and his sister, but a familiar face was a familiar face and he wasn’t about to complain. The door opened up wider behind him, the people inside assuming Jack’s willingness to touch another person a sure sign that said person could be trusted. Jack hated to be touched, after all. 

“Can’t fuckin’ believe it,” Jack said, pulling back to look over Cian. There was a huge scar over his face and a burn on his neck that hadn’t been there before. He looked a lot wearier than when they’d last met. A lot more dead. Jack felt cold. “… Where’s Aoife?”

“They took her.” Cian swallowed hard. “They took us both. Sent her somewhere, I don’t know where. Branded me as a servant. I got away, heard your name, figured it was a crapshoot, but I’d get to the rebellion, right? A rebellion that would either let me fight or kill me on the spot. Neither sounded so bad. Guess I was lucky, right? Objectively, as you’ve said.”

“Jesus,” was all Jack could say. 

“I’ve been with them,” Cian continued. “They keep the people who are useful. Mostly for translation opportunities. So you guys can either label me a traitor and beat the information out of me, or I can just tell you what you want to know.”

“We’re more of a Sleepless in Seattle place, regardless,” Jack told him. “Come inside. Don will want to talk to ye.”

. . .

The Chinese were apparently collecting people. People that could prove useful to taking down what looked like the entirety of Europe. Cian reported them taking in people who understood roads and buildings, like engineers and newscasters. Teachers, too, but he reported they mostly took bilingual or trilingual people. Jack couldn’t imagine why. 

“Dunno,” Cian had replied simply. “They need to know what people say over the airwaves, I guess. It’s easier to use a native speaker. They also took government figures— the ones who were alive, anyways. And construction workers. Because they’re strong, I guess? And also because they know the layouts of the subways and sewage systems better than the people who designed them. But they still want the designers for anyone unknown detail.”

Jack found irony in the fact that these invaders now knew Ireland better than he ever had. Don had plenty of ideas of what they could be doing with the engineers and teachers and translators. Jack honestly didn’t want to know the things Don seemed to know. His purpose was still to get across the pond and find Felix. The UK was a lot bigger than Ireland, but he’d figure it out. He’d use signs or something. Use a HAM radio. They didn’t have any fucking HAM radios in any of the castles aside from a single one because communication was one of the first things the Chinese had hunted down and destroyed. They wanted to wipe all the Irish out, apparently. And the rest of this spot of land. The UK had reportedly fallen. Jack wasn’t sure why they’d been the target (all the movies had suggest America would be the first country to be decimated) but he didn’t care enough to find out. He just needed to find Felix.

“You’re welcome to stay as long as you need to,” Donovan told Cian. “After what ye’ve been through, we won’t expect much. I’d just ask you to clean some dishes once in a while, ye’? But you’re done fighting.”

“What if I want to fight?” Cian asked. His jaw was set and his eyes alight. Jack could see a fiery purpose in the other boy that Jack knew he lacked himself. “I want to stand up to this. You didn’t see what I did. What they were doing to people. What they did to me.” Cian turned his head and let his neck fall into the light. The burn Jack had seen before now looked more like a brand. It was intricate Chinese text packed into a neat square that was three inches wide and long. “Property of the emperor,” Cian translated, sounding murderous. “We were nothing to them but tools. Let me fight.”

“We don’t want boys on the warpath,” Don sighed. “We need levelheaded men and women who know how take orders and be able to keep their wits about them. We want smokers, not fire starters.”

“I’ll do whatever you want,” Cian said. “I just need to find my sister.”

“You and Jack really are a lot alike,” Angus commented gruffly. Jack narrowed his eyes at the Scotsmen, but remained silent. 

Don sighed again. “… We’ll see how ye’ do out there. But I have every right to pull you from the field if I feel like you’re a danger to yourself or us. We’re fighting a war, here, but we’re not going in, guns a’blazing. We’re relying on being quiet, getting in and out without being seen, and not losing a single man. Got it?”

“I can tell you all the radio channels they use,” Cian said, like he was ignoring Don’s words. “And I can translate.”

“You speak Chinese?” Jack asked, a little surprised.

“Conversationally. It’s easy to learn with a knife to your throat,” Cian said. 

“We’d like those channels,” Don said, eyes wide and excited like it was Christmas. “You could save lives with that information, Cian. We would really appreciate any help you can give us in that department. What we have in brute force, we lack in the intelligence department. I can try to get you a radio. It’s down in Blackrock castle. It’ll take a lot, but we’ll get you that radio if you can get us their channels and help us understand.”

“Will you let me fight?” Cian asked. Jack didn’t like the coldness in his voice.

“We’ll give you a trial run,” Don reasoned. “I’d like you to teach Angus what you can of the language, too. Key words if anything. Just so we’re not dead in the water if something happens to ye’.”

“Be prepared,” Cian mumbled. He looked to Jack and, for a split second, he smiled and looked like the boy Jack remembered, sitting by the fire and watching his little sister hug a pillow shaped like an eyeball. “Always be prepared.”

. . .

Jack had been lying in the same position for six hours. The thing about being a fucking sniper was that he got a lot more time to himself than he could ever want. He had hours, sometimes even a day or two, where he would lie still and wait for his target to come into focus. He was meant to be watching Don, Angus, and a few other men’s backs as they went on a supply loot, taking much needed ammo from a weak silo that was an old windmill. Jack was just supposed to take out any guards that could approach the mill while everyone was inside. Jack was lying atop a hill a little less than a kilometer away. The water from the ground was soaking into his clothes and his legs were numb. But he’d already taken out two men and no one was any wiser. Things were going well. His mind drifted.

He hadn’t given himself the chance to think about Felix in a long time. There was a lot to be said about keeping busy and going to bed bone tired. He didn’t have a lot of time to think unless he was killing people. Some of the worst moments in his living life, and he took the time to think about Felix. It was almost like an insult to Felix’s memory, and Jack felt more than a little guilt the first time Felix’s blue eyes had spun in his mind while he lied on his stomach and took a man’s life. But he was slowly becoming desensitized. He was doing what he had to do to survive. Felix was one of those things.

_“You know you’re gonna live with this for the rest of your life, right? You’re never gonna get over this guilt,” Felix said as he watched the replay of his character’s death onscreen. Seán cackled, nearly doubling over in his chair as he admired his amazingly backhanded way of stabbing Felix’s character with a bayonet. “You’re gonna regret ever doing this to me.”_

_“Uh, I’m pretty sure I’ll be fine,” Seán said, moving to find a new match. “You’ll get over it anyways, Fe’. Especially if you end up killing me this next match.”_

_“I’m gonna own your sexy ass,” Felix mumbled as they started to play, licking his beard in concentration. “Just you watch.” Onscreen, Seán shot Felix’s character three times and killed him. “What the fuck?!” Felix shouted, literally shaking his desk in frustration. “I’m gonna fucking kill you!”_

_“Keep it down!” Seán laughed. “Yer neighbor will file a complaint again!”_

_“Fuck them and fuck you!” Felix raged, though he was smiling. Seán didn’t think he was actually too upset. “I’m gonna fucking fly over there and fucking fuck you up, Seán, I’m gonna fucking kill you.”_

_“Please do,” Seán replied, voice lilting suggestively. Felix choked on a laugh and shook his head._

_“You miss me,” Felix accused._

_Seán’s smile became melancholic. “I do, _a stór_. I really do.” He sighed. “… But hey. Anywhere, anytime, I would do anything for you.”_

_“Anything for you,” Felix repeated with a happy grin._

Jack was pulled from his head by a distant shout. He pulled the trigger without thinking and took out the guard that was trying to get Don caught. The man dropped dead and Jack felt nothing. Angus waved in the air, a gesture of gratitude. Jack killed another man that was about to come up behind Angus. He then waved two fingers that he knew no one would be able to see in the air and started to dismantle his rifle, ready to bug out. 

Angus and Don and the rest of the group were on their way out with bags full of bullets that they’d soon return in the form of fatal wounds. Jack wanted a warm dinner and an empty head before bed. They loaded into the stolen Liberation transport trucks, everyone silent, heads bent and keeping to themselves. They filed into the castle once back. A women was waiting for them, wearing a heavy black jacket with a scarf around her ears. She held out a clunky box that made Don’s eyes light up.

“Is that my radio, Elena?” Don asked, grinning. When she nodded, he laughed and clapped. “A step closer to libration, my friends! I’ll get Cian to write down the channels and we’ll find out what these fucks are doing. What they want.” He looked around at everyone, looking for the same excitement the felt in them. “We’re getting closer!”

Jack gave a half hearted clap and went put to his room, the one he shared with Cian. As he went inside, he saw Cian curled up around Jack’s eyeball pillow while lying in his respective cot. When Jack came in, Cian dropped the pillow and sat up quickly, clearing his throat. Jack watched him with a disheartened expression.

“Last time I saw Aoife smile was with this thing,” Cian explained stiffly. “Guess we all lost something, right?”

“You’ll get her back,” Jack said.

Cian’s expression turned to stone. “Find anything?”

“Don got his radio,” Jack replied. “You’re gonna be called to him any second now.”  
 There was a rap of knuckles on Jack and Cian’s door. Mary poked her head in. “Cian? Don’s looking for—”

“I’m up,” Cian said. He left the room with Mary, leaving Jack in the room alone. Jack picked up the eyeball pillow, clutched it to his chest. He lied down on his own cot and shut his eyes. He remembered when he’d first gotten this pillow from Felix— it had smelled like the Swede. It had meant so much to him. 

Now it just smelled like grimy and a little like blood. There were stains. He didn’t know who the blood had come from. He wished they could afford to clean this thing, but he was worried of washing away the colors too. He couldn’t risk it. Couldn’t risk losing the last bit of Felix he had left. His old jacket had new bullet holes in it, the ghost of the parka Felix had gotten him. This fucking pillow was all he had left. 

Jack shut his eyes and let himself fall into an exhausted, dreamless sleep.

. . .

“They’re bringing the Major General here,” Don told Jack excitedly the next day. “The actual Major General— we’ve been raising such a ruckus, blowing their shit, that they’re sending in the big guns to wipe us out.”

“How is that a good thing?” Angus asked, sounding skeptical. Cian cast them all a glance from where he was bent over the radio, a place he’d been for the past three days, just listening to the gibberish and translating plans, shipments, and body counts. A lot of numbers and codes that Cian inexplicably knew. 

“They’re bringing the garrison,” Don explained. “That’s a lot of sergeant and captains and colonels that will be here because of him. If we hit them, we’ll be destroying a metaphorical leg of the dinner table.”

“Sounds risky,” Jack commented. 

“It is,” Cian piped up. “They’ve got a lot of security for wherever the Major General goes. Trying to take him out will be difficult. It’ll take a lot of manpower and way more than a windmill of bullets.”

“We can handle it,” Don said firmly. “We can. We’ve got men and women all over this country, all of them trained at this point. If we take out the Major General, a retreat will be called for the Liberation Army. And that means that at least one of the beaches on the east side will be cleared.” He directed his gaze to Jack, knowing what that would mean to him. “It’s in our best interest to claim some sort of beach, for more reason than one. We need to establish contact with any sort of rebellion on the other land. we need o get this fucking fight under control. Taking out the Major General is the best way to do it.”

At this point, Jack couldn’t disagree. They only reason they’d gained any ground was by taking huge risks and coming out, objectively, lucky. If they wanted to get a spot of beach, before being wiped out by this Major General, they were going to have to take an even bigger risk that those they had taken before. Jack tightened his grip on his rifle and thought of Felix. How he would have laughed at the idea of Jack being involved in a fucking rebellion, like the people from Star Wars. Seán would’ve laughed with him. Jack didn’t laugh anymore. 

“He’s bringing his harem with him,” Cian interrupted. “And his personal intelligence committee.”

“His engineers,” Donovan said. “His teachers. Translators and governmental officials. The people they took from us.”

“People who, if we take back, will be an even blow hit to their efforts.” Angus scratched at his beard and nodded. “The benefits definitely outweigh the risks. What we could gain from sticking our necks out just a little longer…”

“It’s worth it,” Don agreed, grinning. “C’mon, friends. We need to take back our land.”

. . .

In the weeks before the Major General’s arrival, they prepared. Jack spent most of his time going over close combat with Mary, because Don wanted him to be on the frontline. The plan was for Jack to stay back in the beginning while the ground forces barreled through Dublin, in an attempt to get into the heart of the city, to Trinity College Dublin, where the Major General would be staying with his posse. Cian reported there was only fifty thousand ground troops, as the Liberation Army was grossly underestimating how many rebels there actually were, thanks to Donovan’s habit of keeping numbers low during attacks and always staying in the shadows. Their own headcount was in the hundreds of thousands. An actual fucking army. 

Jack would be brought in by vehicle once the streets were cleared and he’d be set up on the top of the college library, the perfect vantage point for getting a bullet in through the destroyed ceiling of main hall of the college and take out the Major General in the courtyard, where he would undoubtedly be once the attack hit. Jack was supposed to take him out. He was used to that sort of order. He could handle it.

Cian was nervous. He spent most of his time bent over the radio with Mary. She was a fucking godsend. Jack wasn’t good at emotions anymore, though he’d never been very good in the first place, so Jack wasn’t much help for the poor boy. Not like Mary was. She would hold Cian’s hand to soothe the shakes and clean the burn on Cian’s neck that refused to heal correctly. Jack saw the way Cian looked at the brand in the mirror. He hated to think there were more people who had been used like Cian had. Mary, though. Mary knew how to calm the nightmares. Jack didn’t have anyone but Felix’s memories.

“Once we get rid of the Major General, I’m expecting chaos,” Donovan said. “And in those moments, I plan to get ye’ on a boat. First one to leave Ireland in months, yeah?”

“Sure that should be a priority?” Jack asked.

“After what you’ve done for me and my men, I owe ye.” Donovan smiled and put a hand on his shoulder. “I want to do this for ye’, Jack. Want to help you find yer boy.”

Jack hadn’t argued. He absolutely couldn’t. He wasn’t going to argue against the closest chance he’d had to getting back to Felix. Jack just nodded his thanks and went back to trying to finally pass Mary’s expectations when it came to kicking someone in the chest. Mary laughed at his efforts, a little winded, but not as much as Jack. His hand-to-hand was abysmal compared to hers. “Keep at it, Jack!” she encouraged as she blocked yet another one of Jack’s failed attempts. “Maybe you’ll have to able to beat the Major General in a fistfight! Let’s hope not!”

Jack scowled and wished he had his rifle.

. . .

“Today’s the day,” Cian said from beside Jack in the truck. “I’m not gonna see you again after this, am I? You’ll either be dead or across the ocean.” Cian smiled sadly at Jack. “Got your bags packed and everything.” He wasn't wrong. What meager possessions Jack had were stuffed into his duffel and satchel. Jack wasn’t saying much, but he was really riding on Donovan’s promise to get Jack on the ocean the second the chaos proved to be good enough cover. “I’m gonna miss ye’, Jack.”

“Once Donovan no longer has to worry about me, I’m sure his attention will be on Aoife,” Jack assured him. Cian was quiet. 

“… Aoife’s dead.”

Jack paused, giving Cian his full attention. Cian was still smiling brokenly. “She died in front of me, Jack. I just didn’t want you to know it. Figured a good lie would help keep the peace. But, no. Aoife’s long dead.”

Jack couldn’t say anything. After a long moment of tense silence, with faint gunshots ahead of them, Jack looked over Cian’s face. He didn’t look nearly as young as he head three months ago, when they’d first met. He was older. More tired. And he lost his little sister. Jack looked down. His bag was in the corner of his eye and he knew what he had to do. Knew what would regain himself a smidgen of humanity. Jack reached into his bag and pulled out the eyeball pillow, handing it to Cian. 

“No, I can’t—”

“I won’t need it once I’m across the ocean,” Jack said, lying to himself. “You need it more than I do.”

Cian visibly hesitated, but ultimately accepted the gaudy pillow. He laughed wretchedly. “Couldn’t have imagine that this fucking thing would mean so much to me.”

“Me neither,” Jack agreed. A shout came from the front of the convoy vehicle and Jack tightened his grip on his rifle, knowing what that meant and what was coming. He was tempted to peak through the back and see the city of Dublin, the place he’d fought so long and hard to reach. But he didn’t want to see the bodies, either. Jack just took in a long breath and waited calmly for the vehicle to come to a stop.

When the engine finally stalled, he climbed out of the back and squinted at the bright light of day. He could see the college in the distance, a few blocks down, and started running with Cian and Mary close behind with a few other men and women, all armed to the teeth. As they reached the college, Jack saw Donovan waving them in from the library entrance. Cian and Mary broke off, but Jack followed him.

“Climb the stairs, find the ladder,” Donovan ordered. “You’ll have your vantage point from the top.” He put a hand on Jack’s shoulder. “You can do this, Jack. You’re that much closer to your boy.”

“My real name is Seán,” Jack said. He wasn’t sure why he’d felt like he needed to tell the man his birth name, a name he hadn’t used in months. But it felt right. After everything Donovan had done for him, Don deserved to know. The name threw the older man for a loop, but he ended his thought process smiling. 

“Nice ta meet ya, Seán,” Donovan said. “Why don’t you get on up there and kill us a killer?”

Jack gave him a nod and ran up the stairs. He found the rickety wooden ladder and climbed through to the roof of the university. The view was admittedly fantastic— he could see the city burning, could heard the gunshots from far away. People were probably dying out there just for the chance to kill a monster in a fancy uniform. 

He brought out his rifle, let down the stand, and made himself comfortable on the edge of the roof. He trained the scope down towards the inner courtyard and saw a large podium that had red cloth over it and empty seats on and in front of it. Some chairs were knocked over and overturned, like there had been a commotion. Jack wondered if they’d disrupted a special ceremony. He saw a small group of people cowering on the stone floor against the edge of the podium, but they looked different. Some of them were blond, others brunet, and one even hard faded pink hair. They weren’t in uniform, either, but they all had collars around their necks. Jack couldn’t see any of their faces as they were hiding. 

There was a bustle of feet and men in uniforms burst through the large doors at the end, a crowd of people running through the courtyard. A few began to fire back at the way they had come. Jack kept them in his sights, but he was looking for the four stars on the shoulder that would signify the Major General. He spotted the target— he was running towards the cowering group of people. Jack heard the man begin to shout, barking orders. A few of the heads shot up and he saw the fear on all of their faces.

He saw someone else, too.

Jack did a double take, absolutely fucking had to. One of the blonds was a man that looked so heartachingly familiar that Jack’s stomach turned over. His scope was top quality, he could make out the details of a face so familiar that he could draw those same details from memory if he had to. 

It was Felix. 

Alive and breathing, ducking to hide from gunshots, a collar around his neck and a burn on his skin. His hair was longer, down past his chin, and his beard was mostly shaved. He looked way too thin. Seán’s instincts screamed for him to just start shooting, take down everyone that was a threat to Felix in one fatal swoop, and he almost did. But Donovan wasn’t in the courtyard yet. Donovan hadn’t given the signal.

He saw one Liberation solider grab Felix by the hair and drag him to his feet, screaming in Felix’s face. Seán didn’t think twice. He got the man’s head in his sights and pulled the trigger, watched the skull explode in a burst of blood and bone. Felix’s face washed clean of fear and fell into bone deep shock. Felix sunk to the ground and stared up at the rooftops, looking for where the shot had come from.

Seán turned his scope away and saw Donovan rush into the courtyard with men and women surrounding him, all firing at the Liberation soldiers. That was the cue. Seán set his sights on the Major General, who was being shielded by various guards. But Seán knew what he was doing. He fired twice, once to kill the man between him and the Major General, and the second to take out the Major General himself. The man dropped to the ground, his jaw gone, blood spilling everywhere. But Seán was already packing up his rifle before the body hit the floor. Halfway through closing up his rifle, he realized the minute and twenty-eight seconds it took to do this properly was too long. He abandoned the rifle completely and dropped down the ladder, running down the stairs. He met more of his fellow rebels at the bottom of the stairs, but he ignored them, letting them cover him as he made a break for the courtyard.

As he burst into the scene with a loud shout, a flurry of bullets making their way overhead from everywhere, Seán made eye contact with Felix from across stone. The world froze in the moment, becoming silent. Felix stumbled forward, then began to run. Seán’s heart stopped, because bullets were still flying. Felix was going to be shot in the Liberation Army’s last efforts to keep Dublin.

Seán broke into a run as well, needing to reach Felix before something happened. Bullets shot past his hair, he felt the hot air, felt them whiz by, felt one nick the back of his thigh, but kept going. A fucking grande went off to his left, and Felix ducked down, shielding his head with his arms, but still running. They were less than meters apart now, eyes only for one another. Seán heard someone shout his name that sounded like Donovan, but he wasn’t going to stop. 

They slammed into each other as a bomb went off in the library, rubble raining down. Seán threw his arms around Felix, pushed him to the ground, and shielded the boy with his body. Felix’s arms wrapped around his ribs, held on tight, and as the main building began to collapse behind them with screaming and gunshots surrounding, Felix pressed his face into Seán’s neck and said, “I can’t believe you’re alive.”

They lied like that, not saying anything as the world continued in its chaos around them. Seán knew Felix wouldn’t be able to hear him. He focused on Felix instead. The shaky rise and fall of Felix’s chest, how he could feel every individual rib Felix had pressed to his own. The way Felix’s fingers would dig harder into Seán’s back with each loud bang of destruction. The gentle touch of Felix’s nose to his chin and the scratch of Felix’s beard on his skin. This was hardly the reunion he’d imagined, forced to hide and remain silent, but it was beyond anything he could have thought of at all. Half of his daydreams of finding Felix involved a much colder, stiffer, lifeless version of the Swede. Felix was very much alive and breathing in his arms. Seán couldn’t have asked for any more. 

The word eventually calmed, falling silent. There were groans of pain, people who had been shot and survived. Seán wouldn’t dare lift his head to check. The firefight that had happened around them was a huge issue of disconnect for Seán. He didn’t feel like a part of the carnage with Felix in his arms. 

“Jack?” came Donovan’s voice. Relief flooded Seán to know the man had survived. Only then did he feel safe enough to raise his head. Seán looked up and saw Donovan had his gun trained of them. Jack bristled and refused to remove his body from Felix’s.

“Put that fucking thing away,” he snapped, arms cradling Felix’s head to his chest. Donovan quickly lowered his gun.

“Is that…”

“Felix, we need to get up now, love,” Seán prodded, ignoring Don and sitting up, pulling Felix up with him. Felix was staring at Donovan and the gun in the man’s hand. His collar beeped softly, a red light flashing in the center of it. “Fuck, Fe’, what is this?” Seán asked, delicately framing the device with his steady fingertips. 

“Dog collar,” Felix choked out, tearing his eyes from Donovan to Seán. “Is it really you?”

“It’s me, _a stór_ ,” Seán promised, bringing his hands up to hold Felix’s face. “It’s really me. We’re gonna get ye’ out of here, okay?”

“The others—” Felix turned his head to look back at the cowering group. Most of them were still alive. “Our collars, Seán. We can’t leave. They set it up to be surrounding the college. But we can’t…”

“We’ll get them off,” Seán promised. “Don?”

“If anyone would have the key, it’d be the Major General,” Donovan said. “I’ll search the body.” He set a hand on Seán’s shoulder. “Nice shot, by the way.” He moved on to the Major General’s bloody corpse. Seán turned back to Felix, still holding his face in his hands. A moment passed between them both before they shared a shaky smile. Felix’s hands came up to cover Seán’s and he bent inwards, pressing his forehead to Seán’s. 

“You’re real, right?” Felix asked again. Seán was sure he was going to ask that a lot. 

“I’m real,” Seán promised. “Can ye’ stand?”

“Fuck you, you think you make me that weak in the knees?” Felix’s giggle was broken at the end and sounded way too pained, but it was there at all, and that meant a lot to Seán. Seán stood and pulled Felix up to his feet. Felix was wobbly and pitched forward to slump against Seán’s chest. Seán took the moment to pull Felix into a fierce hug and burry his nose into Felix’s messy blond hair. “Wanna go home, Seán,” Felix said. 

“I’ll take ye’ somewhere safe,” Seán said as Donovan ran up with what looked like an electronic beeper. Donovan pressed it to the red dot on Felix’s collar and the collar released, dropping to the ground. Felix shuddered and Seán stomped his heel onto the device, breaking the plastic. “I swear I’ll get ye’ somewhere safe.”

. . .

Felix remained pressed to his side as Donovan surveyed the completely decimated city. “Looks like the bomb hit just off the beach. Most of the damage to the city looks more like it was water,” he commented. Seán almost laughed. There was a giant fucking crater in the shallow water that probably continued for miles into the ocean, of course the bomb hit off the beach. Felix was warm against his side and the drone of Donovan’s voice was putting Seán into a trance. He was slowly coming to grips that the man at his side was his dumb Swede and he’d finally found him, in the clutches of the enemy. Felix hadn’t pulled away far enough from Seán for him to be able to survey if he had any wounds. He wanted to look him over, but he probably shouldn’t do that in front of everyone else. 

“Can’nae believe we won something this big,” Don commented. “The price was huge…”

Angus was dead. At least a hundred or so others were dead as well, and more would be soon. They were currently clearing out the stragglers throughout Dublin, the soldiers that hadn’t bugged out. Seán felt a little sorry for them, but then he remembered the way a simple guard had shoved Felix around by his fucking hair. He didn’t want to think about what Felix had been through yet. 

Donovan turned to them both, sent Felix this odd smile, like he didn’t know how to talk to a POW, even though Cian had been the same as Felix. Then he looked to Seán. “I, uh, I know there’s not a lot to offer, but we’ve found a few homes still intact. If you’d like somewhere a little more private to hunker down for the night…”

Seán snorted a laugh and put a hand around Felix’s waist. “That ain’t up to me.” He looked to Felix, who met Seán’s gaze with wide eyes, like he hadn’t expected to be spoken to. Then he just kinda shook his head frantically and remained silent. Seán frowned a little. “Uh. I guess we’ll take a room. But not too far from ya’. Wouldn’t want to get spotted by anyone nasty.”

“I take it you don’t think we’re out of the woods yet,” Don commented. He nodded to himself. “We’re holing up in the library. That’s the only thing that survive the blast that’s large enough to hold most of us. I’m sure there’s a study room or something in there.”  
 Seán nodded as he gently rubbed Felix’s back. “Thanks, Don.”

Donovan gave him a two fingered solute. “You’ve done us a real favor by taking out that monster, Jack. We appreciate ye’ and what ye’ve done.”

Seán gave a little wave as Donovan turned to leave, leaving him and Felix alone in the welcome area of the college. The stone ceiling was completely blown off and Seán felt a moment of regret to see all of the beautiful structures blown to bits. Men and women walked past them, carrying supplies and weapons, but Seán didn’t pay them any mind. He pulled Felix around and into his chest, practically cradling the skinnier man to him. Felix pressed their foreheads together and still refused to speak.

“Y’okay?” Seán asked.

“Who’s Jack?”

Seán winced. “Me. I went by a different name until I found ye’. Didn’t feel like myself. Not with everyone who knew me by that name, for the most part, gone.” He shrugged, rubbing up and down Felix’s arm delicately. He felt mostly bone. “Never felt like Seán till I got ye’ back. But I can make the switch, if it makes ye’ uncomfortable.”

Felix shook his head. “It’s fine.”

Seán sighed, and tried to make Felix meet his eyes, but nothing worked. “Fe’, _a stór_ , what’s wrong? I thought ye’d be happy to be with me again.”

“I am happy,” Felix mumbled. “Just… hurt.”

“Hurt?” Seán repeated. “Because of me name? It’s just a name, Fe’, and a fuckin’ false one, I don’t—”

Felix pulled back for the first time in ages and lifted his stiff shirt to reveal a myriad of purple and green bruises matting his entire left side. Seán’s eyes went wide and he wanted to reach out and touch, but quickly aborted that gesture when Felix flinched. “Punishment from last night,” Felix explained, lowering his shirt when someone came into the room. He cast his eyes downwards. “Having a hard time breathing.”

“Jesus,” Seán choked. “We’ll get ya some painkillers, I promise. Mary has some with her, she always has fuckin’ everything.” He knew he should’ve looked Felix over ages ago. The man could’ve been shot for all he’d known. “I’m so sorry, Fe’, we’ll get ye’ something for the pain and something for yer stomach.”

Felix shook his head. “Just wanna go to bed…”

Seán faltered. “I can find ye’ somewhere to rest, if you’d really like.”

Felix gave him the stink eye. “Wanna go to bed with you, you idiot. I’m not gonna spend months from you in the hands of a crazy fucking military being tortured only to find you again and just sleep in another fucking room.”

“Tortured?” Seán paled.

“Just find us somewhere to sleep for days, Seán,” Felix pleaded. “Need you more than anything.”

Seán did find one of those private study rooms. He pushed his jacket into the corner, tried to make Felix something close to a bed, and lied down, pulling Felix into his lap. Now that the world was quiet, Seán could see and hear how labored Felix’s breathing was. Something rattled deep in Felixs’ lungs with every intake of breath that worried Seán. Felix lied down across his lap, head to Seán’s chest, and fell asleep with their legs tangled. 

And see, Seán hadn't slept well since the world ended. Hadn't slept well his entire life, really. But with Felix against him like this and the warm feeling of victor finally settling over his bones, he could swear he fell asleep within the same five minutes it took Felix.

. . .

“Looks somethin’ awful,” Mary commented as she helped Elena, their sweet old medic, fix up Felix’s side.

“Poor lad has a few broken bones, I can tell ye’ that,” Elena tutted. Seán watched from a seat across from Felix, eyes narrowed as he watched. He needed to make sure no one accidentally hurt his boyfriend while they were looking him over. Felix was watching Seán, face white, from either pain or instinctual fear from having strangers with their hands all over him. Felix was trembling a little, Seán could see the shivers run through his body. He reached out and took Felix’s hand in his own, wanting to ground him. 

“We can’t set these,” Elena told Seán, appearing apologetic. “He’s just gonna have to be careful, like you were with your hip. You need to keep an eye on the lad, right? And no strenuous activity! That includes the hanky panky, boys.” She sent them both a shrewd expression that was only barely able to hide her smirk. Seán rolled his eyes while Felix managed to blush despite how all the blood had left his face.

“Don wants a debrief,” Mary said. “From both of you. I know it may be hard, but he needs to know what the Liberation Army was doing with our people. And he wants to know if Felix knows anything about the bombs dropping.”

Felix grimaced and Seán assumed Felix did know a thing or two that they didn’t. 

“Tell Don I need ten more minutes,” Seán said, watching Felix. “Gotta get him his drugs.” He wanted to talk to Felix. He wanted to hear certain things in private before he had to hear them being told to his leader, where he couldn’t comfort Felix if needed. Seán nodded to Elena and Mary, who both took the hint and left. Felix didn’t look up.

“Fe’,” Seán murmured, moving to sit beside Felix, still holding his hand. “Don… He’s gonna ask ye’ some questions that make me a little concerned.”

“Like what?” Felix mumbled. “The torture? It was a car battery with the ends to my fucking inner thighs. Sometimes they’d drown us and bring us back over and over. And then they’d pull out teeth. Toenails. Fingernails.” Felix held up his free hand. The nails were missing from his thumb, pointer, and middle finger. Seán felt nauseous. “They just wanted us to serve them. And punish us. Not my fault they were too fucking dumb to realize a Swedish man doesn’t come from the fucking UK.”

“Why would that matter?” 

“Don’t you know?” Felix asked. “The UK. Britain. They were the ones to launch the first bombs. You guys started this.”

Seán felt like the air had been punched from his lungs. He brought a hand up, covering his mouth, letting the shock wash over him. 

“It was a botched transmission,” Felix sighed. “Bad code, no one really knows who sent what, but you guys were the ones to first launch the bombs. So while it wasn’t really the UK’s fault, I think, the world blames you. I mean, the bombs had the British flag. It’s hard not to point the finger.”

“Who’d they fire at?” Seán asked.

“Who didn’t they fire at, is more like it. Russia, America, South Korea, South Africa, fucking Mexico, even. Britain had at least a hundred twenty live warheads, Seán. They took out all these huge cities. Took out Paris, Seán. It was chaos. I could see missiles fly overhead like birds. Everyone fired on London. That place is fucking gone.”

“And Brighton?” Seán had to ask. He’d heard so much. 

“China came in,” Felix replied. “They’re the last functioning government, I think. They came to my university, had these people go door to door through all the dorms to grab people just before a final bomb hit. They asked people what their majors were and then if they spoke any extra languages. If you spoke less than three, it was a bullet to the face.” Felix’s expression looked haunted. That was when Seán remembered Felix’d had a roommate. “I could hear the screaming down the hall. Didn’t have any way to help anyone. Me and George locked the door, but they just kicked it in. They didn’t care about George’s studying of sports medicine. But me? They liked what I could do.”

Felix looked to Seán, his expression full of despair. “I’ve seen so many die, Seán. And I’ve wanted to die with all of them. I never thought I’d reach you. When they were torturing me, trying to brainwash me, I’d thought I was going to die I never, ever thought I would reach you.”

Seán smiled sadly. “Can you believe that, for not one moment, I’d thought I wouldn’t find you? I guess I believed enough for the both of us.”

Felix shook his head. “Can’t imagine what you’ve seen. Guess listening to me complain must be pretty annoying, huh?”

“I can promise ye’, I didn’t go through what you did.” Seán ran his thumb over Felix’s knuckles. “But for what it’s worth, I’m glad yer alive. I’m glad you were important enough to be kept alive. Even if you went through hell for it, it was a hell that led back to me.”

Felix managed to smile back. “You always were a fucking bright side person.”

“One of us has to be.”

There was a knock at the door, and Donovan came in. He smiled politely at them both as Seán struggled to help Felix pull his shirt back on. It was a shirt they’d taken during a supply run, not the stiff cotton the Chinese had put Felix in that reminded Seán hauntingly of the uniforms people were forced to wear in Nazi Germany Concentration camps. Seán preferred the soft green shirt Felix was wearing now, with the cargo pants and the jacket to combat the cold of the castle. He’d had a nice breakfast of beans and fruit and he was looking a little less gaunt, though the pale skin from the pain isn’t helping Felix’s complexion.

Still. Seán thought he was beautiful.

“Mind if I ask you a few questions, Mr. Kjellberg?” Donovan asked, the face of politeness. 

“I’ll tell you everything I know.” Seán smiled at Felix’s response and squeezed his hand. Regardless of the hell that had happened, he was proud of Felix. 

. . .

Slowly, Felix regained his strength. His ribs healed, though that haunted shadow in his eyes never went away. But he wasn’t a stick. He had more muscle on him than bone, and he smiled a little more. He and Cian talked a bit, traded trauma of being a translator, and sometimes he’d reminisce about how awful British cuisine was with Mary, but other than that, Felix didn’t talk much to anyone who wasn’t Seán. He didn’t even talk to the other Intellects the resistance had rescued from the Chinese. That was what Donovan called them. The Intellects. Intelligent people that the Chinese were coveting and using as a way take down Europe from the inside. It would be hard to wipe out all these people if you didn’t speak their language. 

Hence, why Felix had been so valuable. Italian, Swedish, German, and French. Then Chinese. Felix had learned pretty quickly as well, the whole adrenaline thing. He could even read some simple Chinese phrases, but he usually refused to do so. Felix hated everything related to that country now, and back in the real world, Seán would’ve called it racism. But Felix had further spoken of what the Chinese had done to him. Seán couldn’t blame him for the intrinsic antipathy Felix felt. 

A few weeks later, though, and Donovan was starting to ask questions. What Seán wanted to do, what Felix wanted to do, if they intended to stay and fight in Ireland, or if he should still try to get them a boat. If he should find himself a new wunderkind sniper. Seán felt bad. Donovan didn’t have a lot of room, and while they were holding fast to Dublin, Donovan still didn’t have a lot of room. Don hated wasting space on people who didn’t plan on helping out, and Seán didn’t take it personally. Don had been so lenient because Felix had been healing and also giving him such nice information. The news of the UK being the one to launch the first bombs hadn’t settled well with the Irish Insurgents, but they’d adapted well enough. Most of them were high and mighty and said Ireland wasn’t part of the UK in the first place. 

Seán knew he had to make a decision quickly, though.

“There’s nowhere to go,” Felix told him hollowly later in the night. “Everything is occupied. Ireland is the last part that’s free, believe it or not. It’s why they sent the Major General along.” Seán ran his fingers through Felix’s hair, who was lying beside him on a dingy, flat mattress that smelled faintly of wet dog. “The only reason they haven’t blown you guys up is cause they want the bragging rights. Want to save they avenged the world.”

Seán nodded and brought his face closer to Felix, but Felix didn’t lean in. That was the kicker, too. Felix hadn’t let Seán kiss him. Hadn’t let him do anything. Hell, Felix hadn’t see him shirtless since Elena had been tending the wounds. It was like there was this physical wall between them, but not? Because Felix couldn’t stop touching Seán. Ever. He always had his hand on or around Seán, desperate for the contact. But Seán couldn’t kiss him. He was getting disheartened, but he couldn’t bring it up. Not yet.

“Donovan’s away,” Seán murmured. The castle was quiet, almost empty save Elena and a boy name Jameson who was trying to fix the sewage of the castle. About fucking time, if you asked Seán. “He’s trying to get his hands on some sort of, uh… Fuck, I dunno. I didn’t understand. They’ve got men in shadows, outposts all around, but this one is special, for some reason. Guys with codes people use to get past checkpoints. I think Don wants to move into Britain. Take back the rest of everything.”

“He’s gonna get himself killed,” Felix replied. 

“Don’s smart, he can handle himself. He’s gotten us this far.”

Felix look to Jack, barely visible in the darkness. “Is this hero worship or something else?”

Seán snorted. “He’s at least forty, Fe’, I’m not fucking mooning over him. I’ve got you, ye’ know… Don’t I?”

Felix let out a noise of pain and Seán felt a shot of guilt. “I know I haven’t been physical,” Felix said. “But I-I’d like to think our relationship s a little more than just sex. Just because I don’t put out doesn’t mean—”

“Not what I meant, not what I mean,” Seán interrupted, hating the wild edge that Felix’s voice had taken on. “We’re more than that, _a stór_ , trust me, I know. We were a fucking online relationship for years, I know we’re more than sex. Just wish I could kiss ye’.”

Felix sat up, running a hand over his face. “I wish we could leave this place. Go somewhere sunny.” Seán wasn’t sure why Felix had said that, but he was sure it meant much more than what it pertained to in this conversation. The unhindered moon and starlight behind him lit up the back of his head like some ethereal visage. Seán wanted to reach out and hold. Wanted to pull Felix close and soothe away all the fear and pain that had never left Felix’s mind. He wished he could erase everything that had happened to the other boy. He knew he never would. 

“You can kiss me,” Felix sighed. “You can.”

“Really? Cause every time I try, ye’ just pull away. Like me breath smells like garlic or something rank.” Seán tried to smile. “Just seems like there’s something wrong. Something that I need to try and fix.” Like a lot of other things with Felix right now. Like the Chinese and the nightmares and the shaking. Seán had a lot of work cut out for himself, but he was more so grateful that he had Felix at all. “Just want to know how to get ye’ back, Fe’. To really get you back.”

“They tried a lot of different torture,” Felix said. “It’s fucked up, Seán. It’s all too fucked up and I don’t want to think about it.”

Seán sat up and took Felix’s face in his hands, his own heart racing in his chest. He didn’t want to talk about this. He didn’t want to think about this. He didn’t want Felix to relive it. “Just gonna ask ye a few things,” he said, hedging a line. “Did they try to touch ye’?”

“Jesus, no,” Felix choked out. “No, no, not like that. Just… When a human hand beats the shit out of you enough times, you start to fear all human hands, in general. The idea of touching, even, uh, intimately. It scares me sometimes. It’s stupid. I’m stupid.”

“We live in a horrible world, Felix, I would never call you that.” Seán shuddered and pulled Felix into a hug. “I’m just glad you’re okay. That’s all, Felix, I swear. I’m sorry for pressuring ye’.” He tugged at Felix gently and lied back down. “You and me, Fe’. Anywhere, anytime— I would do anything for you.”

“Anything for you,” Felix said. There was a sniffle and Seán’s stomach dropped when he realized Felix was crying. He could only pull Felix to his chest and hold him. At least he felt marginally better about how fucked up they both were.

. . .

Mary barged down his door early in the morning, crazy eyed and crying.

“We lost Donovan,” she said. 

Jack shot up from bed, rifle in his hand in seconds. He toed on his shoes and went out the door, knowing Felix would follow. With Donovan gone, Mary fell to the title of leader, and Jack was her right hand man with Cian to the left. That was just how things worked now. Jack knew what was expected of him and had no qualms in taking out every son of a bitch that would stand between him and Don. That man had done more for Jack than anyone in this castle (aside from Felix). He wouldn't leave the man to die. None of them would.

“What’s the plan?” Cian asked Mary in the war room—the previous dining room of the castle, biggest room in that shit hole. What rebels had come back with Mary were standing around the room, watching with weary eyes, waiting for their next move. Mary looked so unsure of herself. Jack took pity on her and stepped forward.

“They just took one of the most influential resistance leaders in all of Ireland,” he began. “They’d be fucking stupid to take him anywhere that isn’t heavily guarded and built to the fucking T. The only area the Liberation still has a stranglehold on is the Cliffs of Moher. But with our new hold on Dublin, we can get some boats around there and have them as our escape route. So really, we just go through the fucking whatever they have set up with Don set up inside, and keep going through, coming out the end. Doing some cliff diving.”

“That sounds deceivingly simple,” Cian commented. 

“Cause it is simple,” Jack said sharply. “We take a small team, get in and out. If we keep it quiet, we won’t have a fucking problem. Hell, we should blow their generators! Do this in the dark! Shine fucking flashlights in their fucking eyes and blind ‘em!”

“Who would go?” Mark asked. “I mean, obviously you and me. Who else?”

“I’ll go,” Felix spoke up. Jack’s eyes went wide and he wanted to immediately shut that idea down, but Cian beat him to it.

“You’ve never been out there in a fight,” he snorted. “You probably don’t even know how to use a weapon.”

“But I’ll bet you I’m fucking faster than all of you,” Felix shot back. Jack was a little astounded that Felix was speaking so loudly and in front of so many people. Most of the surrounding rebels looked a little shocked to learn Felix had a voice at all. “And if you want to get anywhere in any facility they have, you’ll need me. I know the Major General’s master key.”

Mary’s jaw dropped. Jack had thought that the master key was what Donovan had been looking to use to find the plans for Britain. “What? But only Don—”

“How the hell do you think Donovan got the key?” Felix asked, looking like he wanted to roll his eyes, and fuck, Jack’s heart fluttered a little, because this was his sassy little Swede. Just a shadow, but enough to make him smile. “I’m not supposed to tell any of you guys know the key. We don’t want that shit getting into the wrong hands, so unless you want to be stuck running in circles and throwing chairs at iron doors, hoping to break them, you’re going to need me.”

Mary looked like she was at a loss.

Cian grimaced. “Well shit, guess we don’t have a choice.”

“The cliffs are a hundred and twenty meter drop,” a women spoke up from the corner. Jack honestly didn’t recognize her, so she was probably from another castle. “You can’t survive that unless you carry something along to throw into the water first. Something to help break your fall. And you’ll need special instructions on how to land.”

“We’ll break a few bones, fuck it,” Mary said, seeming suddenly on board. “I want Felix, Jack, Rory, and Helena.”

“What?” Cian looked like he’d been slapped. “But I—”

“We can’t loose both Chinese speakers, and Felix is a definite traveler,” Mary explained. “The rest of the Intellects are spanning out, being assigned to different castles. I need you here in case we don’t come back. So these men won’t be dead in the water.” She made him meet her eyes. “Understand?”

Cian grit his teeth and nodded. 

“Helena, you run us through those dropping techniques till we’re blue in the face,” Mary told the women who had spoken up before about the fall. “Felix, I’m going to give you a gun. Something simple. Jack’s going to hang back and cover us.”

“He’s not coming in?” Felix looked alarmed. “Wait, but—”

“I’ll be there,” Jack interrupted. He knew Felix had said he’d come along for the sole reason of staying at Jack’s side. “I’ll go in.” He looked to Mary. “I’m going in. There’s no vantage point out there anyways. I’d be hitting people in their feet. Fucking useless.”

She sighed. “Fine. But you and I are going to have a long talk tonight. Really elaborate on this shit. I hate fuzzy details. Fuzzy details cost lives.” She looked around the room, the air tense. “God knows none of us want to risk any more of those.”

. . .

“Go over the plan one more time for me,” Jack requested softly six days later. He and Felix were leaning into each other, across from one another on the benches of the convoy vehicle. “Just once more, _a stór_. So I know.”

Felix smiled shakily. Jack could see he was nervous. Everyone could. The handgun looked foreign in Felix’s hands, no matter how careful Mary had been selecting it. Jack honestly didn’t see the point, but she’d decided Felix would work best with a Beretta 87. Jack just thought it made Felix’s hands look even more pale. Made him look somehow smaller. 

“Get in past the gate using the master key,” Felix said slowly. He’d gone over this plan about twenty fucking times already, thanks to Jack’s insistence. “We’re coming in at night. Blow their generators so they can’t use CCTV and catch us. Get into the building with the master key. Small facility, only one hallway with five doors. Donovan’s in one of them. Then we attach our cables to sturdy structures, drop half the distance while connected, then disconnect and free fall the last sixty meters and hit the water. Pray we don’t die. Or pass out and drown.” He smiled shakily. “Sound about right?”

“Pretty good, Fe’.”

“It’s a fucking shit plan, Seán.”

Jack grinned. “Thanks. Worked really hard on it. ‘M glad for the support.”

“Seán,” Felix said softly. “This is dangerous. So fucking dangerous.”

“We have to get Donovan,” Jack said. “He’s the backbone of the resistance. Without him, we’ll fall apart. Not forever, but long enough for the Liberation Army to gain good ground on us. We can’t afford that.”

Felix sighed. “You’re right.”

“Hey,” Jack murmured, taking Felix’s face in his hand. “We’ll make it out alive, yeah? Always. We’ll always come back to each other. Even the fucking entire Chinese army couldn’t keep you and I apart.”

“I’m not worried about that,” Felix said. “I know you’ll come back to me if you’re alive.”

“But that’s the catch, right? You think I could die tonight.”

“Or me,” Felix replied. “Any of us could.”

“You lot ready?” Helena asked from the driver’s seat. “We’re going on foot from here. Looks like it’s raining, too.”

“This is it,” Mary breathed. “Everyone, on your feet. Let’s go get Don.”

They piled out of the back, feet slapping onto the mud. Jack pulled up his hood and was grateful for the night vision scope he had on his rifle. But everyone else was pretty fucked. The flood lights from the facility they were trying to reach were really the only way they could know where they were going. The facility was about the size of a large church, but without the steeple and all of the windows were barred. There was a guard tower next to two large floodlights that were pointed at the facility’s walkway.

They all moved low to the ground, familiar with these operations, save Felix. Luckily he was good at learning by example. They crept along the ground, getting muddied legs along the way. Mary led them to a few large rocks less than twenty meters from the facility gates. 

“We need to be silent about this,” Mary whispered, her eyes intense. “Helena, do you see anything?”

Helene slowly raised her head up just barely over the edge of the rock to survey the area. Then her head was gone in a mixture of blood and bone Jack was familiar with seeing, though never this close. Helena’s lifeless body dropped to the ground with a thud. 

“Oh fuck,” Mary said. 

The world exploded in blinding white as the floodlights were turned on their hiding spot. Jack could clearly see how Felix’s eyes were screwed shut with fear as bullets began to fly over their heads, hitting the ground at their feet, hitting Helena’s corpse.

“I’ve got fifteen grenades!” Rory shouted over the chaos. “Five explosive, ten fragmenting!”

“Fucking throw something!” Mary shouted back, eyes wide. Jack was relieved to remember Rory had been a rugby star before all of this shit. Even from an awkward angle where he was keeping his head under cover, the military grade grenade reached for enough to damage. Darkness prevailed as the shrapnel reached and took out a floodlight. The sound of splintering metal hurt Jack’s ears and Mary started shouting nonsense just to ground herself. Rory was asking Jack was he was supposed to do, but Felix was still horribly silent. 

“Other light, other light!” Jack told Rory. The man pulled the pin from another grenade and had the gall to stand, throwing the explosive with more accuracy. The second light went down. “Now the leg of the guard tower!”

“They’ve got explosives up there, I just know it!”

“Don’t fucking argue with me, hit the fucking guard tower!”

Rory looked terrified. Felix still had his eyes closed. Jack scowled and grabbed one of the explosive grenades, standing to throw it it. A bullet ripped through his side, but the immediate pain didn’t stop him from hitting his mark. The resounding blast tore through one of the standing legs of the guard tower and the whole thing toppled forward, covering most of the distance between their rock and the facility gate. The best cover Jack could ask for. Rory took out the four men that had been in the guard tower, who had been disorientated from the drop. Jack crawled along the length of the now-burning guard tower. Felix followed with Rory and Mary close behind. As he passed the guard tower top, he saw the explosives Rory had thought there’d be. Flames licked them. 

“Shit,” was all he had time to say before he threw his body over Felix’s as the explosives caught fire and lit up, the shockwave rattling Jack’s teeth in his skull. 

“We need to get past that gate!” Mary shouted, going up over her cover to fire at and kill a Liberation solider, who was one of many firing at them from behind the safety of the gate and the concrete barriers that mostly protected them. Jack looked down at Felix’s, whose fingers were brushing the blossoming bloodstain at Jack’s side. “Felix, the gate!” The gate had a keypad, just like every door would in this place. “We’ll cover you!”

Felix met Jack’s eyes, then crawled out from under Jack before he could stop him and made to run for the gate. Rory stood and fire at the Liberation Army, giving Felix the moments he needed to reach the keypad. Astoundingly enough, Jack had never, ever seen someone run as fast as Felix was running. He was a fucking blue, sprinting to the keypad and putting in the numbers. The gate slowly pulled open, and Jack could hear the panicked shouts of the military that didn’t understand what was happening. 

“Go, go, go!” Mary shouted, more scared than demanding. She and Jack threw out cover fire as they ran into the facility. Jack’s rifle took out man after man with deadly accuracy. There were only five men out guarding the front of the facility. He was sure that the Liberation Militants inside were hedging their bets on remaining behind locked doors. Their bodies slammed against the walls as shots were fired at them through the barred windows of the facility. “Felix!” Mary snapped. “Second door!”

“The generator is around the building!” Rory told them. “We have to blow it to get through the second layer!” The door into the facility had two layers— one to be opened from the outside, the other from the inside. They needed to destroy the generator to release the second door. Rory’s eyes looked up, then widened. “Grenade!”

They all hit the dirt. Shrapnel flew and Rory let out a scream. Jack lifted his eyes and saw a rhubarb pipe from one of the concrete barriers had gone through Rory’s leg and out the other leg. He wasn’t going to be the one to go for the generator. The four final explosive grenades lied by Rory’s side. Felix saw them the same moment Jack did. 

“Mary, he—” Jack cut himself off when he saw Mary was literally paralyzed. Her hands were wrapped around her knees and she was shaking so badly, startling with every gunshot. She was useless. Probably remembering when she’d lost Donovan. Jack set his mouth in a grim line and looked back to Felix. Jack took up the line of explosive grenades, and Felix’s eyes widened. “Get in there,” he ordered. “Shoot anything that moves. Grab Don, and get out.”

Felix shook his head. “Not doing this without you.”

“Fucking listen to me,” Jack growled. A bullet whizzed past him and split open his cheek. He didn’t even flinch “We need Donovan. You are the only one now who can get him out of here. Rory will cover you and handle Mary, but ye’ have to be the one to grab Donovan. Only you know the code.”

For a long, tortured moment, Felix listened to Jack’s words before his expression turned into one of grim acceptance. Felix leaned in, taking Jack’s face in his hands, running his thumb through the blood of Jack’s new cut, and pressed their lips together. Despite the chaos around them, Jack’s heart swelled and he shuddered. The relief filling him over having this possible last moment with Felix was more than he’d ever had the courage to ask for. He was so distracted by the way Felix’s lips felt against his own that he didn’t notice Felix coaxing the grenade line from his hand. 

“47-63-52-58,” Felix murmured against his lips. “47-63-52-58. Anywhere, anytime. I would do anything for you, Seán.”

“Anything for you,” Jack breathed back, smiling with tears stinging his eyes. This felt like a goodbye. He tried to clench his hand around the grenades, but he looked down in shock when he saw his hand was empty. His blood ran cold when he saw the grenades in Felix’s hands. “No.”

Felix looked apologetic before he pulled away and sprinted around the facility. The gunfire followed him, and Felix covered his head with his arm, but Jack knew that wouldn’t be able to stop bullets. He reached out, moved to stand, to go after Felix, but Rory held him back.

“The door,” Rory grit out through the pain. “We can’t open the door!”

“47-63-52-58,” Jack breathed, before turning to the keypad and hitting the buttons. The first door swung open with a hiss, and the bullets died down. At first, Jack thought it was shock that they could get in through security. But then an explosive shook the ground, and Jack’s heart leaped into his throat. The second door swung open. Rory shot a man in the chest, then another in the neck. 

“Jack, we have to move!” Rory shouted, dragging Mary to her feet the best he could. Mary stirred and lifted her weapon, taking out a man just over Rory’s shoulder. At least she was still able to function. 

Jack burst into the facility, relying on Rory and Mary to cover him. There was only one hallway in this place and it was directly from the entrance. Jack tore down it, ducking to look into the rooms that had windows. Don had to be in one of them. The last door he reached had holes in the door. He kicked it in, hedging his bets. A breath escaped him when he saw Donovan curled up in the corner, very much alive.

“Jack?” Don called out, disbelief written across his face. 

“We’re leaving,” Jack said firmly, heaving Donovan to his feet. The man didn’t appear hurt. That meant he could run. Thank god. “C’mon.”

“The cliffs—”

“Don’t have fucking time to talk, Don, fucking move!” Mary and Rory ducked into the room that Don had been in, pushing Jack further in, Rory rambling something about a bomb moments before a boom nearly burst Jack’s eardrums and the walls shook, the ceiling trembling and raining plaster. Rory pulled Mary out of the room and Jack saw the hole in the wall that looked out into an endless, black ocean. Jack pulled out his line of cable, as did the other two, and they hooked the line onto part of the concrete that was broken and pointing into the air like stalagmite. He looked around for Felix’s line of cable, to show he had been this far, but saw nothing. Before he could put his cable around Don and go back for Felix, Rory was grabbing Don, and shoving Jack off the ledge.

He shouted, then choked on his tongue three seconds later when the cable snapped taught. He quickly unhooked himself and dropped another three seconds into the frigid, black water. The small buggy that was waiting for them floated peacefully off to the side. Jack swam towards it as the cold pervaded every limb in his body. 

“Yer hand, boy, yer hand,” came a voice. Jack threw out his hands and was pulled into the boat. A blanket was put over his head. The boat tipped as more people were pulled onboard. He heard the gasping breath of Mary, the relived words from Rory, and Don’s hurried orders, the man quickly falling back into his role. 

Then he felt arms wrap around his torso. Jack lifted his head, squinted in the darkness, and saw Felix, alive and breathing. He was covered in scratches and bruises— he probably hadn’t had time to fully clear the blast. But he was alive. 

“Thank fuck, Fe’,” Jack breathed, moving into to kiss Felix, to finally ground himself and understand that they had made it. They’d survived.

“I love you,” Felix said. Seán returned the sentiment as exhaustion and pain washed over his body. He fell unconscious in Felix’s arms, hearing the other boy frantically scream his name and beg for him to stay awake. 

. . .

Seán had always been one to get seasick. He loved the ocean when looking out at it, but being on a boat or, god forbid, actually in the ocean was never a fun experience for him. And if you had ever asked him how he would feel, having Ireland shrink away in the distance, he would’ve told you he’d be a little heartbroken. Right now, though, he was anything but sad. 

He looked down at the deck of the freight boat they were taking across the ocean down the coast of Europe and smiled softly, content to watch Felix play football with the few kids that were being smuggled with them. The freight was passing safely through now-Chinese waters under the guise of being a goods transportation boat, but the Chinese were pulling back to their own country slowly, deciding that their punishment had been dealt. Besides, Ireland wasn’t even fucking part of the UK for the most. 

Donovan had been grateful for what Felix and Jack had done for him, but at the same time, had been pretty insistent on them leaving. Felix’s stupidly dangerous act of intending to sacrifice himself had caused Donovan to push for them to leave. Not because Don didn’t need them, but because he didn’t want Jack to lose what he’d fought so hard to have. He’d pushed for them to leave, saying Felix needed some sun and good air to really get better. Jack had wanted to stay, but Seán knew he had to go. For Felix. Cian had been pretty adamant on them taking the chance they had to leave Ireland, too, but Jack hadn’t been sure. 

Now, watching the other man kick the ball around on the lower deck, Seán knew he had made the right decision. Spain was probably less than a day away, and Seán was excited to get his feet back on land. Over three thousand kilometers of ocean, and Seán was sick of all the blue. Some days, if he squinted, he could see the shore of a distant country that he couldn't name because everything looked the same. But Felix seemed to be having the time of his life. 

He was excited to wake up every morning, always eager to have the sunlight on his skin and watch the birds fly overhead. He’d read books in different languages, translating them all into English when he read aloud to Seán. And he helped the cooks in the kitchen, eager to learn new things, saying he wanted to be able to cook for Seán like a good wife. Seán had laughed, waved him off, and wondered to himself if marriage was still a thing or if he was just better off saving the money and simply telling Felix he wanted to live out his entire life with the other boy. 

“Heads up!” Felix shouted as the football came flying at Seán’s face. Seán just barely had time to throw himself to the side. That had actually been a very impressive kick on Felix’s part. “Sorry, Seán!” Felix laughed, the sound pure and genuine and lifting Seán’s heart. 

“You fucker, ye’ better not pull that shit again!” Seán shouted on principle. He smiled back, though, unable to stay surly in the face of Felix’s happiness. The children laughed playfully, all of them latching to Felix, as he had become a figure of joy for them over the weeks. The horn from the freight suddenly sound, loud and jarring, and Seán covered his ear with a wince. Someone far away shouted about land, and Seán squinted out against the setting sun, seeing a coast coming towards them. 

“Seán, that’s Spain!” Felix shouted helpfully, sounding so excited. God, he loved that boy. Spain had been in the same boat as most of Europe, thanks to the flurried panic that ensued after the first bombs flew. 

Felix had asked about radiation poisoning, Seán honestly didn’t care either way. Mary had told him all about the symptoms, none of which he felt, and he knew that nuclear fallout from hydrogen bombs settled mostly around the drop zone. So they were going to avoid the drop zones and build a new life in the sun in the slowly recovering countries of the world. Once things were rebuilt, they’d probably get kicked out, but everyone seemed pretty fucking badly off. And with the way the world had been before the end, Seán doubted anyone would want to rebuild in the world’s past image. 

All Seán wanted know was to take his boy to a spot on the beach and learn to fish. Donovan had sent them off with more perishable food than Seán could count, a heartfelt show of thanks for all Jack had done for him. Felix had asked him how they were going to carry that to the knew home they were going to have that they hadn’t even decided on yet. Seán had no fucking clue, but they’d worry about that later. 

Felix came bounding, pulling himself up over the railing to join Seán as he watched the land come closer and closer. Felix looped his arm through Seán’s and rested his head on Seán’s shoulder with a loud, yet contended sigh. 

“We made it,” Felix said, like he couldn’t believe it. “I-I know you wanted to stay. I just wanted to say that I’m thankful you came with me. I couldn’t stay. I’m sorry.” Seán’s heart went out to him. He appreciated Felix’s ability to understand what the resistance had come to mean for Jack— they had been the ones to give him back Felix, give him back the meaning in his existence. Even for all the pain and blood, being with the resistance had been worth it in the end.

“You deserve the sun,” Seán said, turning to place a kiss to Felix’s head. “Even the most intelligent doctors say there’s nothing like the warm weather to cure all wounds. Like I could even stay if ye’ left, anyways. Waste that whole fucking war for nothing, Fe’? That’d be the biggest waste of my time.” He readjusted his stance to better support Felix. His hip hurt and he walked with a limp now. Felix loved to see the limp because he said the damage could have been so much worse. The limp meant Seán could still walk. Was still alive. “I’d follow ye’ to the ends of the earth, _a stór_.”

“Hopefully you won’t have to do that,” Felix chuckled, sounding a little regretful. “I wish I’d had better hindsight. Would’ve tried to find you.” He sighed. “I wish I’d believed you were alive enough to fight back against those bastards. But I never would’ve thought you’d have turned out to be some sort of badass rebel.” Felix grinned at Jack, leaning in to kiss him. “You saved me, Seán. That’s the most dedication anyone’s ever shown me.”

Seán was proud of himself. He wasn’t hurt that Felix had given up— the Swede’d had every single reason to think everyone he’d known was long dead, or on the verge of dying. And after the torture Felix had survived, it was no surprise to learn that Felix’s capacity for hope was more than lacking. Seán would’ve had a hard time seeing a light at the end of the tunnel with car batters attached to his thighs. While drowning. He couldn’t imagine ever having the gall to hold this sort of thing against Felix. Still, to know Felix understood what Seán had sacrificed for him was enough to make up for all the months of loss.

He moved in to kiss Felix again. “Anywhere, anytime, I would do anything for you.”

Felix smiled softer. “Anything for you.”

**Author's Note:**

> all the places/distances/military details written into this story are as accurate as i could make them but i had to hedge some facts cause i didn't want them to die of radiation poisoning sorry like Ireland ain't actually that big


End file.
